


Blood Runs in Cycles

by rex101111



Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Angst, Cycles of Revenge, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, hey any of you seen the Afro Samurai movie?, neither anji or baiken get hurt but, yeah it's like that, yeah this ain't pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rex101111/pseuds/rex101111
Summary: Anji knew Baiken's past wasn't...pretty, even beyond the destruction of their home. He just never expected to meet it so suddenly.
Relationships: Baiken & Mito Anji
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Blood Runs in Cycles

**Author's Note:**

> AN ACTUALLY OLD THING I JUST FINISHED HURRAH! have fun it's sad and stuff

Anji had seen his fair share of…troubling things. He'd seen his home burned to nothing, his people quarantined away from the rest of the world, he'd looked over the shoulder of one of the most dangerous men in the world and saw things that would have driven anyone to gibbering nihilism.

He'd sought out those horrors, purposefully diving head first into the dark and twisted truths of the world, some odd need to know all he could driving him ever deeper, ever forward onto the abyss of the world.

Driven by the shadow of death, nothing would stop him from seeking these things out.

Compared to that, traveling with Baiken was a breezy jaunt through the town square. Taking lives didn't faze him anymore, though he never actively sought it, he had simply long since accepted that his lot in live put him in opposition of not a few people. He protected himself when he needed to.

Death was a familiar touch of ice at his back, he never hesitated to fight back.

Even with all that, when a child, no older than fifteen years of age, burst out of a random corner while they were walking through a small village with a knife in her hand and charged at Baiken with a blood thirsty roar of rage…he froze.

For all the horrors of the world, for all the grotesque monsters he had faced, a child with a weapon was always a harrowing sight.

Baiken was of the same mind, it would seem, since she had only barely stepped back in time to dodge the attack, the tip of the blade catching on her clothes and only barely missing the flesh of her midsection.

The shock ended as soon as the girl turned for a second attack, Baiken's fist digging into her stomach with an audible meaty _thunk_ as the air got knocked out of her lungs. The attacker dropped her weapon and clutched her stomach with a miserable groan, quickly crumpling to her knees as Anji and Baiken starred down at her with varying amounts of shock and confusion.

Several passersby seemed to consider intervening, either to help the girl or hold her down so she won't try to attack again. Their considering ended as soon as they recognized Baiken and himself, quickly making themselves scarce, probably to call some local muscle.

Anji couldn't say a word, no witty remark came to mind as he looked between the girl kneeling in the street holding on to her lunch and the rip in Baiken's clothes that was almost a hole in her gut.

Baiken's gaze was unreadable, her fist remaining suspended in the air where it impacted with the girl, as if the counter attack was a reflex made with no deliberate intention. She slowly lowered her fist as the girl raised her face to glare at the older woman, hate and anger set deep in pale blue eyes, nearly white from the glare of the midday sun.

That was no accident, Anji realized, the girl knew _exactly_ who she was attacking. He'd be impressed if this situation wasn't horribly surreal. Baiken's eye narrowed at the girl, a hint of reproach gleaming through, only growing stronger as the girl peered at her dropped weapon.

Not a knife, Anji vaguely noted, but a Tanto. A rather expensive, not to mention rare, weapon, clashing with the threadbare rags the girl was wearing.

The girl clenched her teeth and a fist, eyes flitting between Baiken and her weapon, as if considering if she could rush for it before the samurai could stop her.

The samurai lowered her hand to the hilt of her sword, her wrist leaning lazily against the pommel as she narrowed her eye at her attacker. "Don't-"

Before she could finish her warning the girl leapt with a hand outstretched towards the weapon, face determined and twisted with single minded propose. As soon as her fingers closed around the hilt of the Tanto, Baiken's heel landed on her knuckles with bone cracking force.

Baiken let out a disappointed sigh, "warned you."

"Damn-" The girl choked out from between her teeth, tugging at her hand to try and get it from under Baiken's foot. "Shut up! L-let go damn it!"

Baiken scoffed and ground her heel with a sneer, "and let you try that stupid shit a second time? Fat chance kid." The girl growled in anger and pain, grabbing at Baiken's ankle with her second hand to try and move it. "…that's just sad."

"SHUT UP!" The girl screamed, throwing a punch at the foot crushing her hand, tears of either pain or frustration at the edges of her eyes, "JUST _SHUT UP!"_

The outburst actually surprised the samurai enough to move her foot, the punch barely registering in her mind as the girl got back to her feet with the knife clutched firmly in both hands.

A few droplets of blood fell from between her braised and bruised fingers.

Anji finally found enough sense to break out of his trance and place himself firmly between the two, facing the attacking child with arms raised in a placating gesture that fell utterly flat as a snarl twisted her face further.

His eyes jumped from place to place as he took her in properly for the first time, slim build with dirty, sun burned pale skin (homeless, 15 at the oldest), various pale scars on her arms and legs (scrappy, angry, unafraid), rough cut black hair framing a gaunt face and two pale blue eyes.

(Constantly trying to look at Baiken behind him, a target in mind…oh no.)

This needed to stop, right now.

"So hasty!" Anji called out to her, a friendly smile slipping on his face with practiced ease, voice level and diplomatic. "Most people make a bigger thing of trying to kill us, they get so dramatic and plot so thoroughly, and yet here you are!" He laughs appreciably, making his best effort to look impressed with the girl who looked at him like he was everything wrong with the world simply because of where he stood. "Right out of nowhere! Caught me off guard! Both of us!" He looked over his shoulder at Baiken, a desperate glint in his eyes, "isn't that right?"

Baiken saw through him so quickly he was frankly ashamed of himself, her face a stone mask deflecting the silent request he sent her. She was not in the mood to humor his sympathy. "Anji-"

"That's right!" He quickly shouted over her, hearing the girl gnash her teeth the moment Baiken started talking. "Not that I hold it against you, mind, but I honestly think we all started off on the wrong foot here." He stepped closer in her direction, each footfall slow and methodic so as to not draw attention as he spoke. "So, why don't you just give me that weapon and we can-"

" _Get."_ She ground between her teeth at him. " _Out of my way."_

Anji stopped short, peering at her from behind his glasses for a long moment, the girl leaning away slightly at the sudden pressure she felt as he did so, her hands shaking as she tightened her grip on her weapon.

Her eyes.

He’s seen them before.

Baiken scoffed, moving to step forward herself to meet her attacker head on…stopping when Anji raised an arm to halt her. "What are you-"

"Just a moment."

She threw a snarl at the back of his head, "she's not going to listen to-"

" _Just let me **try."**_ He hissed, turning his head just enough so she would hear him, voice tight and angry.

Baiken blinked at him, taken aback, before she shook her head and sat down on the dirt road, taking out her pipe. "One, you get _one."_

 _"STOP IGNORING ME!"_ The girl screamed waving her weapon in the air, eyes gleaming in rage and taking a heavy step towards him. " _WHY WON'T YOU **LEAVE!?"**_ She pointed her weapon at Baiken again, " _I JUST WANT TO KILL HER! AND I'LL KILL YOU TOO IF YOU DON'T MOVE! WHY WON'T YOU-!"_

"Do you _honestly_ think you have a chance?" He snapped, the girl flinching as if slapped, her jaw clacking shut. "Do you have _any_ earthly idea who this is?" He pointed at Baiken while he sent a derisive glance back at her, "some girl with a knife she has no idea how to wield and dressed in rags, what makes you think you stand chance against her?"

She strikes, a guttural, nearly feral, scream of rage accompanying a savage thrust of her knife, aimed right at his heart. He doesn't strike back, merely puts a hand on her wrist to stop the tip of the weapon half an inch before it touches skin and keeps a firm, vice like grip.

He doesn't strain as she tries to pull her arm out, and deftly moves his feet away when she tries to stomp him and holds her at arm's length when she tries to kick at him. His voice is calm and patronizing as she struggles. "Look at this dear, if I can make a fool of you, what do you think _she'll_ do?" 

In a fit of utter desperation, she closes her jaw on his hand, teeth sinking into the flesh between his knuckles. Blood drips from the bite mark to the ground and down her chin, her other hand reaching out to his fingers to try and dislodge them.

Outwardly, he only raises an eyebrow at her, unaffected and even _bored_ at this last ditch attempt to justify this suicidal tirade of anger. Inwardly, it takes every inch of restraint he can muster not to gather the girl in his arms until she calms.

Her _eyes,_ glimmering and shining with so much rage and so much sorrow it makes him sick to his stomach. Anger enough to burn the world down, laser focused on a single person. Years, God knows how many, spent without a roof over her head or the guarantee of food, sustaining herself on what could only be naked spite.

He'd have to be blind not to see the parallels. And those same parallels are what stops him from any attempts to comfort, to pacify, to show kindness. If her anger at Baiken is even a fraction of the anger the samurai herself displayed in years past, any regard he shows her would be the ultimate humiliation.

He wonders if Baiken sees it, but right now he doesn’t have the time to ask. And if he was being honest with himself, he doesn’t have the nerve. 

He waits for her to tug at her weapon again before he lets go, causing her to stumble back a few steps before she got back into her unsteady stance. “What happened?” Anji asks once she catches her breath, her gaze flickering between him and the samurai sitting behind him, calmly puffing on her pipe. “What did she do to you?”

She stops short, like she wasn’t sure she heard him right, “ _what?”_

“What did she do to you,” he says again, crossing his arms inside his sleeves (so she doesn’t see them shaking) and looking down at her behind his glasses, “that would make you so willing to throw your life away?”

Part of him dreads the answer, but he knows Baiken well enough to accept that her path was bloody enough to cause some collateral damage. He tended not to think too deeply on who she was before they met, of the lives she took, having heard enough rumors about the lone samurai carving a bloody swath through Central Asia to hazard a guess.

Besides, what right did he have to judge her? His ledger dripped red just as much as hers, if she didn’t deem it fit to share her sins with him, he would not drag them out of her.

There was no avoiding it now, the result of one of those sins was standing right in front of him. He knew there were two ways this conflict could end, he needed time to think of how to make sure it didn’t end with a corpse on the ground.

“What did she _do to me?”_ She spits, outraged, narrowing her eyes at him, “what she _did_ was murder my father!” She stabs the air in Baiken’s direction, face stuck in a snarl, “like he was nothing! She stabbed him in the gut and left him to bleed out on the street like a _dog!”_ She breathed heavily, her snarl staying in place as her weapon began shaking in her grip, wailing and screaming, “he didn’t do _anything_ to her! He was _all_ I had! And she killed him!”

Her breathes are halting, Anji could see her barely suppress her sobs between her teeth. She tightens her grip on her weapon, blood dripping between her fingers, and this girl, barely half Anji’s height, takes a heavy, grave step forward.

He barely holds his ground.

She squares her shoulders, and growls, “so I’m going to kill _her.”_ Her voice had suddenly gone steady, sharp as the knife in her grip, and she takes another step, the sound of her bare foot hitting the dirt echoing in his ears. “ _so out of my way.”_

He takes half a step-back, barely an inch of ground, and his heart sank as he realized there was nothing he could do.

“You’ll try.” Baiken’s voice came from behind him as she walked past, gaze focused on the young girl, “and you’ll fail.”

The girl growled and coiled up, as if ready to strike.

Anji held up a hand, weakly, “Baiken-“

“You had your chance.” She cuts him down mercilessly, still not looking away from her would be killer. “She was never going to listen to you Anji.” She puts her wrist on the handle of her sword, but doesn’t draw it. “Don’t blame yourself for what happens next.”

Her words were like a strike to the face, but something in her voice kept him from speaking up. He looked back and forth between the two, Baiken standing straight and calm while her opponent crouched low to the ground, and slowly backed away with his head bowed. Leaning his back on a nearby wall and crossing his arms, he took a breath before raising his head to see how this will end.

Whatever happens next, he’ll simply need to live with.

After a moment of silence, the girl charged again, with the same ferocious roar that started this sordid ordeal, aiming for Baiken’s stomach. The samurai side stepped the strike with the most minimal movement, lightly turning on her heel to let the attack pass her harmlessly as stuck a foot in the attacker’s path, sending her tumbling to the ground with a groan.

Baiken didn’t follow up, simply letting her get back on her feet and strike again, slashing at her wildly. None of the attacks touched her, or even came close, and the girl began breathing heavily between her teeth.

She stepped back from Baiken, who simply continued to stare silently at her, hand still resting on her sword without drawing it.

“Fight me!” The girl screamed, her weapon shaking in her hand, “stop running away! You don’t get to just stand there!” She swiped at the air in front of her uselessly, “you owe me a damn _fight!”_

“Why?” Baiken asked, coldly, calmly, face impassive, “who did I kill?”

“My father!” The girl screamed again, confused and enraged, “ten years ago! Don’t you _dare_ tell me you don’t remember!”

“I killed a lot of people ten years ago, kid.” Baiken replied simply, rolling her shoulder nonchalantly, “shit, I killed a lot of people _two_ years ago,” she looked up at the midday sky, humming thoughtfully, “fathers and mothers, brothers and sister, too damn many to count.” She lowered her gaze back to the girl, “so you’ll need to be more specific if you want me to remember.”

 _“Monster!”_ Charging at Baiken again, her slashing more wild and frantic than ever, her movements sloppy but quick and yet still failing to strike home. “How dare you!? _How dare you!?_ I saw you! I saw you ten years ago, right in this place!”

Baiken circled around a wide slash and stood behind her, waiting for her to turn around and keep attacking her, the slashes beginning to slow down as her strength started to drain.

“I _saw_ you stab him! Right in the stomach! Gutting him like a fish! Like he meant _nothing!”_ Her arm began to shake, but she refused to stop as her tirade continued. “Right on this _street!_ He looked right _at you!”_

Baiken stopped of a sudden, her eye widening slightly.

The girl blind with rage and tears, lunged towards her with all the strength she had left, “how can you not _remember!?”_

This strike came closest, touching the fabric of Baiken’s kimono, but it was stopped from going any further when she caught it between two fingers. The girl, finally spent, released her death grip on the weapon and falling to her knees with a defeated sob. “Why did you kill him?” She asked, breathlessly, quietly, sounding like the child she was for the first time since she appeared from the alley. “Why…? Why…?”

The girl sobbed, her raged replaced with fathomless sorrow, while Baiken simply looked down at her, without a single word, utterly untouched.

(Unbidden, the image of a monster made of metal with a red mane of hair towering over the girl came to Anji’s mind. He would never speak it, he would take that thought to his grave, but something told him Baiken could see it too.)

“Because he tried to kill me.” Baiken says suddenly, voice stable and calm, “I killed your father because he tried to kill me.”

The girl snapped her head up to look at Baiken, as if she wasn’t expecting an actual answer, and once she fully understood it her face hardened to a scowl, some of her anger returning, “ _liar!”_ Her voice had gone hoarse from all her screaming, and she coughed as she shook her way back to her feet. “My father wouldn’t hurt anyone! He was a good person! He-!”

“Loved you?” Baiken spoke again, flatly, making the girl stop short, “I’m sure he did, I’m certain he loved you very much.” Baiken lifted the knife to look at her reflection in the blade, slowly turning the weapon back and forth in her grip, her voice soft and far way, “loved you enough to make sure you had a roof over your head, food in your stomach, clothes on your back.”

She tossed the knife into the air casually, the girl taking in a shocked breath. 

“He loved you enough to do whatever it took to make sure you had a good life, that you would never want for anything.” She watched the knife spin in the air for a few long seconds, “loved you enough to give you something to protect yourself as he went out at night to earn the money you two needed.” The knife began to drop back down. “Loved you enough to risk his life, to go against someone with a price on her head.”

The girl shook, in horror, in anger, in a million different emotions Anji couldn’t recognize, and whispered, “ _liar-“_

“He loved you enough to kill for you.”

“ _LIAR!”_

The knife landed, blade first, right between them, and the sound of it sinking into the ground echoed in the air for a long moment.

“You have his eyes.” Baiken says suddenly, sounding exhausted all of a sudden. She waited for a reaction, but the girl simply let out another sob, so she sighed and went on. “He didn’t sneak up on me like you did, he came to me head on, shaking in his boots, and begged me to let him kill me.”

The girl hugged herself and shook her head, looking away but saying nothing.

Baiken kneeled in the dirt to pluck the knife out, and began closing the distance between them, “he told me he had a little girl, he told me he couldn’t find work, that she would starve if he didn’t bring in food.” When she stood right in front of her, Baiken kneeled to be eye level with her. “Of course, I refused, I didn’t care about him, or his little girl, and so when he attacked me-“ she grabbed the little girl’s hand and placed the knife in her grip, making sure that she held it tightly, “-I killed him.”

Anji felt ill, his hands shaking in sleeves, but he couldn’t move his feet, the pair five feet in front of him, yet they felt like they were across a fathomless chasm, in a world he couldn’t reach.

Baiken, without a word, placed the edge of the knife to her neck, pressing it to the flesh just barely enough not to cut the skin.

“What’s your name?” Baiken stared right into the girl’s eyes, unwavering, “answer me, _what is your name?”_

The girl, unable to move her hand and shaking, gulped a lump in her throat, “Yuna.”

“Yuna.” Baiken repeated, quietly, “ten years, how many people have you killed up till now? How many people have you killed to find me?”

“I-“ Yuna stuttered, out of breath and not understanding what was going on, and continued to fumble over her words, “I-I didn’t-“

“Right, didn’t think so.” She pressed the knife closer slightly, just enough to draw a thin line of blood, Yuna flinching away as far as she could at the sight of it, “you attack like someone who has no idea how deadly a Tanto is, it’s more than just a sharp piece of metal, you need to be _precise,_ to know exactly where you need to strike to cause the most damage, to kill with the absolute minimum of effort.”

A few drops of blood hit the dirt at their feet, Yuna’s breathing becoming more uneven, nervous. 

“In the right hands, a Tanto could kill in a single, well considered stab.” Slowly, she let go of Yuna’s hand, the knife still at her throat, “but in the hands of a wild animal, it’s useless.” She stayed there, on one knee, the sharp edge digging into her skin, “killing someone is the easiest thing in the world, but with a Tanto, you need to do it with a clear head.”

All Yuna would have to do is push forward, less than two inches forward, but Anji could see she was frozen to the spot.

“You came at me with rage, directionless, pointless,” she reached up and swept a few stray hairs from Yuna’s face, so she could meet her gaze cleanly, “and that’s why you couldn’t hit me, but now, with your mind clear…can you do it?”

Yuna’s hands started to shake.

“You don’t know about revenge.” Baiken continued, quietly, “you think you do, you think you’ve lived with it long enough to understand it, to understand what it costs you, how it twists you and changes you.”

Yuna started crying, clenching her teeth as Baiken went on.

“You don’t, I do, I spent longer than almost anyone else on earth with nothing but revenge driving me forward.” She chuckled humorlessly, “I know what that search can do to a person, better than anyone else, it turned me into a killer, into a monster.” Her gaze went soft, her mouth forming a subtle smile, “into someone who killed a father trying to keep his daughter fed.”

Yuna let out a sob, but still didn’t move.

“But you? Only ten years, that’s barely any time at all.” Her voice was somehow encouraging, and Anji wondered how he could feel so at peace while a knife was pressed against her neck. “You still have time, still a life to live…so.” She tapped blunt side of the Tanto, making Yuna flinch. “This is the only chance I’ll give you, a chance to take your revenge before you turn into a monster like me, if you have the resolve, if you are prepared to carry that burden for the rest of your life…then all you have to do, is push forward.”

Tears streamed down Yuna’s cheeks, her gaze glued to the thin trail of blood running down Baiken’s neck.

“I don’t owe you a fight,” Baiken made sure Yuna’s face remained in her sights, “but you were right about one thing…I don’t have the right to run away from you, so, if you can, if you know for a fact that this is what you wish to do…kill me.”

Yuna pushed forward, for barely a tenth of an inch…before the knife slipped from her fingers and landed in the dirt with a soft sound. She covered her face as she cried, falling to her knees again, “I-I can’t…” A sob, pathetic and young, painfully young, “I _can’t…”_

A few onlookers hurried on, and the sounds of the village continued as normal, as if nothing had happened at all.

Baiken stood up, and Anji wasn’t surprised to see he wasn’t relieved. As Baiken began to walk away, a hand on her bleeding neck, Yuna started to get to her feet, shaking all the way up, glaring at Baiken’s back while tears still streamed down her face. “Why?” She hiccupped, wiping her face and nose in a way that almost made Anji’s heart give out, “why didn’t you kill me? You-you could have easily…”

Baiken was quiet for a second, and then she shrugged, “I don’t kill kids, I’m not that far gone yet.” She looked over her shoulder at Yuna, the knife still at her feet, “the rest is up to you, if you give up on revenge…good, there are better things to waste your life on.” She grabbed her sword and unsheathed in less than a blink, cutting a nearby bench clean in half, “but, if you don’t, if you come at me again, as an adult, with intent to kill, I won’t be so merciful.”

Yuna gaped at the sliced bench, and then looked down at the knife, the tip stained red, and picked it up without a word.

“If you can’t let go, if the pain still burns in the bottom of your stomach…learn how to use that Tanto, and find me.” She put her sword back in her scabbard, walking on, passing Anji as she did, “whenever you’re ready.”

Anji removed himself from the wall, looking at Yuna from the corner of his eye for a moment, before sighing and turning away, “wait.” The sound of her voice, still hoarse and raw from her screaming, stopped him, and he slowly turned to face her, the girl walking up to him with surprisingly calm steps, “you know what she’s done, don’t you?”

Anji laughed, mostly from surprise, already guessing what she was getting at, “yes, of course I do.”

“Then why did you protect her?”

“Why didn’t you kill her?” His answer was given with a smile, tired and sad, “I know you wanted to.”

“I-“ She growled, “She’s a _monster_.” She deflected, frustration evident in her voice, “she said as much-“

She stopped when Anji laughed, loudly, suddenly, and shook his head, “oh, sweetheart, you really do have a long way to go if you think that of the two of us,” he smiled at her, the smile he knew showed a glimpse of the life he lived, Yuna taking a step, “that _she_ is the monster.”

Yuna stared at him, taking a step back as he smiled quietly at her, eyes suspicious and spiteful, “what do you-“

“Make sure to practice daily,” he said, cheerfully, a larger smile smoothly fitting over his features, knowing, accepting, that this girl’s fate was out of his hands, “even if we never meet again, and I should hope that we don’t, learning to use a knife can help you live in more ways than you might think.”

Without another word, he turned away from her, and soon found himself back at Baiken’s side as they walked, just as they started before a reminder of the past burst from the shadows.

They walked for a long while in silence, the dark of the night slowly descending on them.

“If she did kill me,” she said of a sudden, voice perfectly calm, “what would you have done?”

He opened his mouth, to answer, and only then realized that he didn’t actually know what he would have done. The idea of her death was a shadow he never acknowledged, the way she carried herself in life and combat made it easy to believe it would never happen.

He abandoned so much to be by her side, to try and keep her safe, to try and make her happy, with all he had done and all he had seen, being with her was the one thing he was confident he would never regret.

He wondered, if another shadow from her bloody past came for her, would she do the same as she did with Yuna? Would she so easily throw herself away?

“Would you have let her kill you?”

“Yes.”

He stopped on the street, his heart cold.

“What else would you have me do?” She stopped a few steps ahead of him, her back a mile-long wall, “kill _her?_ ” She stopped there, shaking her head, “you didn’t answer my question.”

He opened his mouth again, and again, nothing. “I-I don’t know.”

They stood there for a long second, quietly, before Baiken looked at him over her shoulder, every inch of her face exhausted, “alright,” she was quiet, more quiet than he ever heard her, more than he thought he deserved, “but if we see her again, or someone like her again, I expect you to have an answer.” 

She started walking again, and after a few seconds Anji did the same, matching her pace easily.

Their pasts were full of shadows, of bloody grudges, of broken families and burn homes, he knew this. Knew it to his bones. But until today, there was only one shadow he had been worried about, the shadow of Justice and the Gear Maker, their long shades clouding Baiken’s future and whether or not she even had one.

He had ignored the shadows they themselves had cast on others, there was too much to think about when it came to his own demons, so much that he never spared a thought for the demons they left in their wake.

…It was a valid question then, if another shadow came for him, for her, for them, what would he do? 

They were a few miles away from the village, from Yuna, from the place where Baiken let a father bleed to death on the street, before he spoke again. “Whatever I end up doing…” He started quietly, slowly, evenly, “…I doubt it’ll be any worse than anything else I’ve done for you.”

Baiken looked at him as they walked for a moment, sighing and then looking away, “that’s what I’m worried about, Anji.”

He thought of asking her the same question, to put the same pressure she decided he needed to be under all of a sudden…but he knew her well enough to figure the answer on his own.

He would just need to hope they would never need those answer. Anji has had more than his fair share of shadows to last him a lifetime.

…He hoped Yuna wouldn’t start collecting her own.

(This would pass, be forgotten, just another sad story to add to their combined collection of hundreds.

But, not truly forgotten, they would never speak of it, not to each other or anyone else they knew, but they would know that, somewhere, in a village, a shadow would practice with a knife, a shadow they both left on the dirt road and that knew their faces, and would one day seek them again.

Yuna would remember, always, how it felt to see blood run down the edge of her knife, and one day, she would need to decide what she would do with it.

Baiken could only hope her choice would be different then hers.)


End file.
